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 missing something
This is a reassuring book in some ways. Its main idea is that corporations fail because of the personality traits of CEOs. In the classic American manner it removes the idea of looking at social organisation, and replaces it with a focus on the individual. There may be some truth in this position but it is not the whole story.
Think for example of the Roman Empire. A fair number of its leaders would probably be easy to classify as insane, a fair number of the sane ones probably possessed the kinds of supposedly damaging personality traits described here. Yet the Roman Empire lasted in the west for about 500 years and in the East for about 1,500 years. Individual insane leaders made little difference, yet an average corporation can be destroyed by its `sane' CEO in less than five years. Some of these corporations possibly have more revenue than the Roman Empire, some definitely covered as much territory and some may have employed as many people, so it's not just a matter of size.
Similarly we can note that the number of Western corporations which are more than 60 years old is pretty small, those over a hundred years old is smaller still. A fair number of those that survive have had major government contracts or bailouts in that period. So it may be that whatever corporation we look at, and however good the CEO, we have a fair chance of finding failure if we wait long enough. In other circumstances those CEOs who's personality we praise might have been unfortunate enough to preside over the company's decline and in that case, you can bet we could find that they had done something wrong or had a personality to fault, even if their behaviour was the much same as when the company prospered.
In Australia during the eighties some people tried the experiment of assuming that business administration was absolutely good and would therefore be good for the State, and so two state governments appointed business people to run the public service and basically got into bed with business wherever possible. Within two years, those states had almost gone bankrupt and their ability to deliver services was severely curtailed.
Businesses can be administered so that they go bankrupt with fairly local consequences; things like Governments, public utilities and so on, cannot. I'm not really sure if there are any examples in which applying a modern business model has improved State services or increased the general well-being of the `governed' population, even though this is a dogma fiercely pursued. Most of the massive rounds of privatisation in the English-speaking world, seem on the whole to have slowed or diminished services and increased the costs to normal consumers. However, performance is always a matter of performance for who? Some of these privatised public assets have gone on to provide huge incomes for their top level executives and cut costs for big users, so not everyone is unhappy.
We might cynically remark that the message that a corporation can be destroyed by its CEO, is probably welcome to CEO's as it enables those who currently preside over relatively prosperous organisations to claim their salary is justified - `good heavens we could be headed by someone pathological'.
One of the slightly ambivalent points made in this book is that the personality traits which were useful getting a person to the top were often harmful once they got there. In which case, perhaps we need to ask `why is it that corporations tend to select for pathological managers?' In some ways this brings us back to Scott Adam's book the Dilbert Principle, which perhaps asks more profound questions than this book.
However, the big question remains `what is it about modern corporations which renders them so unstable, and so prone to collapse?' I'm not altogether convinced that this is always the result of the CEO, or the result of something better coming along (`Creative Destruction'). Sometimes, competition can only get under way because a perfectly adequate dominant corporation begins to implode.
On the whole, I think the evidence suggests that its not just CEO personality to blame for corporate collapse, something else is happening, and that something else has to do with the particular social nature of the corporation and its aims.
 Not just for CEOs!!
We used this in a leadership training course sponsored by my company -- we started with a "derailer survey" where we answered questions and the consultant/coaches provided us with degrees of risk that we could exhibit any of these derailers. When reading the book, it was powerful to know what my actual derailers are and be able to get strategies for how to manage them. I also found that those of us in the class became more aware of what the others' derailers are and how it is great to pair someone with one set of derailers with someone with complimentary derailers to best manage them at the organizational level.
Fundamentally, derailers are generally wonderful traits until they "go bad" (example: self confidence is great and can take you far, but if it goes beyond into arrogance it becomes a derailer).
I highly recommend this to anyone in management -- the better you know and understand yourself, the more effective you can be. I KNEW what my derailers were, I just was not managing them. Now I get why they are such a problem and am finding it easier to temper them.
Not just CEO's
This book details negative traits exhibited by top tier CEO's, traits that undermined them and often lead to their downfall. But these traits also exist in ordinary citizens charged with any type of responsibility. From housewives, parents, sales personnel, managers, teachers, literally, anyone in a position of authority can exhibit these behaviors. Abstracting the fundamental ideas and applying them to ourselves and others can easily increase our awareness and broaden our understanding of of a very specific type of human behavior: the use and abuse of power.
 Solid ideas and good food for thought
As experienced CEO coaches, Dotlich and Cairo have distilled their experience into an interesting premise: Business leaders fail primarily from internal factors, not external ones. Using a combination of high profile cases and examples from their own practice, they front the theory that 11 personality traits (referred to as "derailers") are primarily responsible for the demise of promising or previously successful leaders.
Virtually all of these traits have a positive aspect, and often are initially responsible for a leader's upward progression. It is when they are overplayed that they tend to extend into weakness - with potentially drastic effect. The primary culprits seem to be reaction to stressful situations, loss of situational awareness, or an unwillingness to participate in meaningful self-appraisal.
Chapter format is consistent, with one derailer covered in each and a final chapter on why CEOs succeed. Interspersed with the case studies are questions and example behaviors to determine "Have you crossed the line?" signs and symptoms, and recommended courses of action.
I found the book to be a sound primer, but written at a superficial level. The case studies are thin and there is a constant undertone that suggests the reader will benefit from personal coaching. Still, for anyone in a leadership capacity with an interest in examining his or her behavioral tendencies, it can be a powerful first step in the process. The book is a fast first read and contains enough meat to hold attention on a more detailed second pass.
Highly Recommended!
If you wonder why all those superstar CEOs suddenly veered off course, executive coaches David L. Dotlich and Peter C. Cairo offer an engaging work of psychoanalysis to answer your question. Leadership failures can result from 11 character traits, either deep-seated personality faults or qualities that once were beneficial but became problematic. The authors offer recognizable case studies and specific advice to bolster their case that these flaws derail leaders. The culprit characteristics can seem a bit general, an inevitable concern in a book seeking simple explanations for human folly. We recommend this easy-to-digest volume to leaders and those who endure them. This is just the ticket for bosses who want to address their possible personality pitfalls before they commit career suicide.
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(based on 11 reviews)
